Will WoW (and other Blizzard games) get DX12 support?

[Kryos]

DX12 for Blizzard games would speed up the game on Ultra since DX11 is drawcall limited. It would also balance the game much better since the ressources are now better balanced on the available cores (cpu and gpu). Is there any information if we will get WoW DX12 support once Windows10 is out?

Here two videos to show the difference DX12 will make:

[wombinator04]

Possibly, for WoW.

But I wouldn't count on DX12 being there next expac.

[Feali]

Is DX12 even out already?

[Troopsmith]

They can easily make the game "use" DirectX 12 but that won't give them immediate gains. They'll need to rework their renderer in ways.

They put a lot of work into their renderer in WoD. Pretty sure they would have made some preparations for using DX12 in there as well.

[Kryos]

Is DX12 even out already?

If you install the Beta Win10 - but Win10 will be released in a few days (29. July) for free. Windows 10 will include DirectX 12 alongside WDDM 2.0.

[dextersmith]

Doubt it, the only graphical update was just done and took 10 years. Even so, it'll still be a cartoony joke.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

They got dx11, so I imagine they'll get dx12. Eventually.

[Kryos]

Doubt it, the only graphical update was just done and took 10 years. Even so, it'll still be a cartoony joke.

Has nothing to do with graphical update. It would just run the game at a higher framerate and they could allow to further into the distance.

[Manu9]

Has nothing to do with graphical update. It would just run the game at a higher framerate and they could allow to further into the distance.

Which is still a great benefit.

[Troopsmith]

Doubt it, the only graphical update was just done and took 10 years. Even so, it'll still be a cartoony joke.

Amazingly wrong. We're also talking about renderer tech, which has little to do with cartoons. The WoW graphics engine has gotten consistent improvement since the game's launch.

[Deleted]

If people knew how low-lever those APIs are, they would not take these threads seriously. DirectX 12 doesn't make something better, unless you use it properly.

Besides, most of the advances in 12 are in making draw calls faster [1] (by packing them up in sequences in VRAM).

It's not that big in graphical differences.

[1] PS. DX12 is following AMD and OpenGL on this.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I wouldn't expect it until next expansion or even the one after what we might be getting soon.

[Auxora]

The performance issues are more with the engine server side. You can have a 5 Ghz quad-core, sli'd Titan system and get 80+ people in the same area in Stormwind or Org (or anyplace) and it goes to 3 fps. That part has nothing to do with client-side performance. Even a modest cpu+gpu will run wow in ultra at 60 fps in most cases. But the server-side issues with many characters in 1 area remain no matter what PC you have, and DX12 (or anything else on the client-side) won't fix that.

Kind of crazy for an mmo like wow that the biggest performance weakness is in the massive multiplayer piece. I don't think that will be fixed without a complete engine change, and that won't happen til wow 2.

[Deleted]

It's extremely easy to use DirectX12 if you already use DX11. Just add a couple of features from 12 and then do Marketing "dada! I got 12". Even if you added something too simple or unimportant or if the work is clumsy nobody may know.

Besides, the most important feature of all new APIs (last year and this year) is in making draw calls much faster (it's not anything huge like requiring to alter art assets or something scary like that for Blizzard).

That new tech was started by AMD. First by submitting it to the OpenGL open standard and for Mantle.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

The performance issues are more with the engine server side. You can have a 5 Ghz quad-core, sli'd Titan system and get 80+ people in the same area in Stormwind or Org (or anyplace) and it goes to 3 fps. That part has nothing to do with client-side performance. Even a modest cpu+gpu will run wow in ultra at 60 fps in most cases. But the server-side issues with many characters in 1 area remain no matter what PC you have, and DX12 (or anything else on the client-side) won't fix that.

Kind of crazy for an mmo like wow that the biggest performance weakness is in the massive multiplayer piece. I don't think that will be fixed without a complete engine change, and that won't happen til wow 2.

Unreal Engine 4 or...whatever the newest one is at the time lol

[Troopsmith]

The performance issues are more with the engine server side. You can have a 5 Ghz quad-core, sli'd Titan system and get 80+ people in the same area in Stormwind or Org (or anyplace) and it goes to 3 fps. That part has nothing to do with client-side performance. Even a modest cpu+gpu will run wow in ultra at 60 fps in most cases. But the server-side issues with many characters in 1 area remain no matter what PC you have, and DX12 (or anything else on the client-side) won't fix that.

Kind of crazy for an mmo like wow that the biggest performance weakness is in the massive multiplayer piece. I don't think that will be fixed without a complete engine change, and that won't happen til wow 2.

Your interpretation isn't accurate. For one, a modest GPU definitely cannot run WoD in 1080p at ultra settings at a solid 60 FPS. You need to start hitting 290X equivalents to get that. There are plenty of benchmarks out there.

Second, it's definitely not the server impacting your framerate. The WoW client updates state based on server info in the background. It's why you can get disconnected and still run around at 60 FPS. The server connection is non-blocking to the game's rendering.

There's a certain threshold your CPU will need to hit for maximum server throughput and event handling. That threshold is fairly low.

Throwing the engine out would be a waste and foolish. They can make updates (and have) to the networking aspects of the engine without destroying their work.

[Mad_Murdock]

I say some basic DX 12 support next Xpac and maybe a more full blown DX support at the end or the following Xpac. I'm not sure there will be a large migrations of people to Win10. So I don't see any reason for Blizzard to rush to get it out.

[Deleted]

Your interpretation isn't accurate. For one, a modest GPU definitely cannot run WoD in 1080p at ultra settings at a solid 60 FPS. You need to start hitting 290X equivalents to get that. There are plenty of benchmarks out there.

Second, it's definitely not the server impacting your framerate. The WoW client updates state based on server info in the background. It's why you can get disconnected and still run around at 60 FPS. The server connection is non-blocking to the game's rendering.

There's a certain threshold your CPU will need to hit for maximum server throughput and event handling. That threshold is fairly low.

Throwing the engine out would be a waste and foolish. They can make updates (and have) to the networking aspects of the engine without destroying their work.

The main problem of wow is the client is still both largely single-threaded, but also it seems to rely way too much on the CPU to begin with. Most new games off-load most of the work to the GPU and some new ones are even multi-threaded.

Contrary to popular belief, no it's not very common, mainly a few pioneers like Battlefield 4 are doing it.

It's extremely hard to turn a game multi-threaded because it's an interactive application.

[Mad_Murdock]

mainly a few pioneers like Battlefield 4 are doing it.

Given BF4 horrible netcode issues, it might not be ideal to mention them

[Archmage Alodi]

7.1s biggest feature : Dx12 support